HOW ONE-THIRD OF OUR VOLUNTEERS SERVE
One of Young Life’s best kept secrets (although that’s not the intent!) is the local committee. When you consider that roughly one out of every three volunteers is a committee member, you understand how dependent this mission is upon the thousands of caring adults who share ownership of the ministry with the local staff and regional director.
Consider this — the adults on the local Young Life committee anchor the ministry. Because the local area is where they live, work, worship, and raise their families, they rightly feel an ownership of the Young Life work there.
These caring adults are the experts on the middle schools, the high schools, and colleges there (or they know who is). They attend the various churches in town. And, they rub shoulders with the members of the community who also care about the future of adolescents.
Most committee members stay in the area long after the staff and volunteers have come and gone. In many cases, it’s their kids or grandkids attending club, camp, and Campaigners. For others, they just love adolescents and want them to have an introduction to the Savior. It’s this love that keeps them invested in the health and longevity of Young Life in their own “backyard.”
You might think of them as Young Life’s version of “Rosie the Riveter”! As the staff and volunteer leaders go out to be with kids, the committee quietly supports this frontline work by providing them with great resources like encouragement, guidance, direction, and discernment. Simply put, Young Life cannot exist in an area without the local committee. It’s their vital presence and commitment that helps ensure the success of the local work.
Check out this short committee video overview for the visual learner!
So What Does A Committee Actually Do?
Say the word “committee” and maybe your first thought is fundraising. There’s no denying that this is certainly part of a committee’s role. But we have so much more to offer these faithful men and women than the role of fundraisers, and they have so much more to give!
Consider the many ways committee members serve locally:
- Help create the vision for reaching every kid in the local area.
- Pray for all facets of the ministry.
- Ensure the integrity of the local ministry.
- Promote Young Life in the community.
- Raise funds to guarantee the local budget, and monitor the area’s financial affairs.
- Support and assist staff and leaders, providing relational, spiritual, and strategic support as needed.
- Maintain the continuity of Young Life in the area, working with the regional director, especially during staff transitions.
Where would we be without the local committee? Young Life’s beginnings tell that story well …
How the Church Came to Our Rescue!
We didn’t always have area committees in Young Life, and it was to our detriment, especially financially. In the very early days of the mission — specifically the 1940s — Young Life’s support model consisted of the founder, Jim Rayburn, flying across the country to raise the entire mission’s budget on his own.
The more the mission grew, however, the more this became less feasible. By the late 1940s, Young Life had three camps and a growing staff, which inevitably led to a growing budget. Jim could no longer be the sole means of raising support for each person.
A wiser model would dictate that each staff person be responsible for raising his or her own support. While this would certainly make life easier on Rayburn, it would place an added responsibility on every staff person. In Portland, Oregon, future Young Life President Bill Starr found a solution.
He felt acutely the disconnect between Young Life and the local church. Possessed with a strong church background himself, he wanted to make sure Young Life was “not simply outside the church, but a part of the ministry of the church. I wanted us to have a representative body out of the congregations. So it forced me to go to pastors, explain who we were, what the goal was, and how we wanted to participate with them rather than outside what they were doing.”
Bill visited local churches and asked for someone from each congregation to become a part of the area ministry. And thus was born the local Young Life committee.
“None of these people had any Young Life connection,” he said. “There were a couple of things motivating me: I wanted them to be part of the overall ministry taking place in Portland at that time. I also thought this could help decentralize fiscal responsibility.
“Jim took it all on himself, he’d go out and raise money and distribute it. Well that seemed to me to be unfair to him and to us. We needed to assume and accept our responsibility, and the move really freed us up to grow.”
The founder’s reaction? Bill laughed, “I think he was thrilled!”
Local Efforts, Kingdom Results
When a committee is healthy, thriving, operating out of their strengths, and enjoying serving alongside the staff and one another, the entire area benefits.
- Staff and leaders feel supported and morale is high.
- Adults in the area are kept abreast of how the work’s going, what the needs are, and how they can become involved.
- Kids win because their leaders are freed up to be with them.
And for the committee members themselves? The return on investment is through the roof, as they see the Lord using their efforts to bring about his Kingdom right down the street.
Learn more about opportunities to serve with your local committee.
